With eBay set to pilot Feedback 2.0 later this month in the UK, Ireland and other international sites, the eBay community is starting to weigh in on with their opinions about the pros and cons of the new rating mechanism.

In eBay's new feedback system, buyers can use a one- to five-star scale to rate sellers on the accuracy of item description, communication, delivery time, and postage and packaging charges (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m01/i23/s03). Buyers are given the option of leaving the starred ratings, called "Detailed Seller Ratings," after they leave their overall Feedback rating (positive, neutral, or negative) for a seller. A preview of the new Feedback 2.0 screens can be viewed at http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200701221753132.html.

Many of the enhancements to the system are likely to please everyone, with useful things like thumbnail pictures of an auction item and the inclusion of the item title on the Leave Feedback page to help remind users of the item they are rating. Buyers appear to welcome the ability to get more specific about aspects of a transaction, especially in cases of inflated shipping fees and item descriptions where fake merchandise is presented as authentic. However, certain sellers have voiced their concerns about the lack of reciprocal features for them to rate their buyers.

One of the other potentially problematic aspects of the new system is the new anonymity of buyers leaving the Detailed Seller Ratings. Sellers will not know which buyers left which ratings, or will find it extremely difficult to (http://pages.ebay.co.uk/services/forum/fb-faq.html). The move makes retaliatory feedback impossible for those detailed ratings.

eBay seller Cindy Johnson said, "I am not a fan of retaliatory feedback, and actually at this point in time, I leave feedback after payment is received and the item is shipped. I do not wait until feedback is left for me. I may change that when the new system is put into place - not sure if it will help or not, but at least I will feel like I have a little more control over the situation."

"I think the good sellers, this is great for them," said eBay North America President Bill Cobb in a January 25 eBay Town Hall meeting. He acknowledged that he'd received some "pushback" from some sellers at the recent eCommerce Forum. But he said that good sellers would "get the recognition they deserve, and I think it's going to be a great way for us to really give buyers more transparency about our really good sellers. So I do think this is a great thing for our sellers and I think it's a great thing for our buyers."

====================
What do you think of eBay's new Feedback 2.0?
Take a survey online at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=558363340457
Continue reading story below.
====================

eBay seller Linda from Pittsburgh asked Cobb during the Town Hall meeting, "I want to know if the seller will ever be able to rate the buyer, like you're saying the buyer can rate the seller." Cobb indicated that the door was open for changes along those lines. "I think everything's on the table," he said.

(Interestingly, eBay's "Uncle Griff," aka Jim Griffith, who was moderating the chat, voiced his support for such a reciprocal feature for sellers and said, "I love that question." He said he'd seen a suggestion on a chat board about how there could be a little gold dollar sign next to a buyer who pays fast. "Because I'd love to have a little gold icon next to mine," he quipped.)

Matt Halprin, manager of the Global Trust & Safety Policy team at eBay, said one of the things eBay used to inform their decision for the news system was convention: "There's not many places you can go on the Internet where a buyer purchases something from a merchant and then the merchant rates the buyer…in fact, I'm not aware of any," he said.

He added, "Obviously, there's some other things we're thinking about for the Feedback system too, that we're really excited about with respect to sellers rating buyers."

But without specifics as to what those may be, some sellers are worried. Jon Langley, a PowerSeller in the UK for many years (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Jons-All-Sorts, and also at http://www.jons-all-sorts.co.uk), has concerns that sellers may be rated poorly on aspects of the transaction over which they don't have control.

He said that with Feedback 2.0, eBay seems to be attempting to "upgrade" their feedback to something similar to Amazon, splitting the feedback into different sections: Description, Communication, Delivery time and P&P Charges. "In my opinion, the only part of this that the seller has any real control of is the description," he says. "Communication can be let down by someone's spam filter, delivery time can be let down by the carrier or postal service, and in fact be down to the buyer not collecting from a sorting office. P&P charges: Well, I have had someone complain that I made a whopping 20p on top of the stamp once. Some people do not realise that the P&P charges should cover the cost of someone packing the item as well the shipping."

He said he is also VAT registered, "which for the UK, means that I have to charge 17.5% on top of what they think is P&P. I.e., if the package costs me £2.00 for stamps, then I have to charge £2.35… That is without the actual packaging and/or time involved. So ideally, I need to have charged about £3.00 for that… But then one person will think that is fair, the other person will say that I have charged too much. Yet, the charges would be in the listing and as such was agreed upon before purchase."

Cindy Johnson was also concerned about being rated on things over which she had no control. "Overall, I don't think Feedback 2.0 will be a positive change. One of the most troubling aspects of it is the fact that buyers are able to rate on the time it took the item to be delivered. While I usually ship within 24 hours and ship seven days a week (we have a regional post office open seven days a week), once I drop a package off I have absolutely no control over how long the post office takes to deliver. The fact that I will be rated on something completely out of my control is unfair."

Other sellers in the U.S. had similar concerns: "I live in Washington state and will often ship UPS Ground on large items to Florida," says Vicki, a PowerSeller who runs the eBay Store "Vicki's Goodies." "Inevitably, I get positive feedback from these people, but with a backhanded comment on how long it took to get to them. It takes a week...not my doing...that's how long it is." Vicki thinks that with Feedback 2.0, these people will give her a lower rating in the shipping area, even if she ships within hours of payment, "just because they can."

But she does like the fact that eBay will retire old feedback so that only the last two years count toward your rating. "I've got some negatives that pre-date the dispute process that I'd like to see gone," she says. However, she says that overall, "It sounds like eBay is just giving whiny buyers new and different ways to complain. I don't see how it will possibly benefit me. EBay and PayPal seem to only care about improving the buying experience, not the selling experience. They often forget that without sellers, eBay wouldn't exist."

Other eBayers see the reforms as a welcome change, and a chance for buyers to get more knowledge about the people they may buy from, as well as a hedge against retaliatory feedback. Said one eBayer on an eBay UK discussion board: "I am looking forward to the FB 2.0 system so buyers can leave feedback covering different aspects of transaction…Product, Service, P&P & Timeliness. This will give potential customers the chance to see the sellers' qualities and areas needed for improvement. Feedback will always play a part in my decision to buy or not. It's a competitive market and sometimes feedback can win you a customer."

Another UK eBayer wrote that, even if the new system was not perfect, "This will still be an improvement over the present system, where a seller can receive neg FB for the whole transaction, based upon communication and/or slow shipping."

And others who've been victims of "retaliatory feedback" have reasons to like Feedback 2.0: "Feedback really is a tit-for-tat system. I paid within 20 mins. of an auction for a painting. Three weeks later it hadn't arrived and he wouldn't answer any of my emails. Paypal refunded me and I put in a wary feedback. He left one for me saying I was a bad buyer." This eBayer thought feedback in its current incarnation "is a waste of time."

In any case, the new feedback system will be rolling out in the U.K. and other non-U.S. eBay sites soon. While it seems some of the changes may be embraced, some users may be hoping for even more change.

Vicki's suggestion? "What eBay really needs to do is make it harder for a buyer to leave feedback without even communicating with the seller. My last neutral was from someone who said they didn't get their package, but I had delivery confirmation. No contact, just neutral."

---
Julia Wilkinson is author of "The eBay Price Guide" (No Starch Press, 2006) and "eBay Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks" (Wiley, 2004-6); and Publisher, Yard Salers, at http://www.yardsalers.net. Her blog, "Bidbits," is at http://juliawww.typepad.com/bidbits.